Sony certainly made all the right noises about the difficulties and potential inherent in virtual reality when it unveiled its Project Morpheus headset earlier this week. Words are cheap, though; the proof of Sony's chops in the quickly developing world of modern VR hardware would only come with the chance to put the device on and explore a virtual world ourselves.

We got an opportunity to do just that, and we came away impressed with Sony's headset, both from design and performance standpoints. Even in its current early state, Project Morpheus is obviously a serious effort at creating a strong VR experience, and it even surpasses the previous best-in-class Oculus Rift in some ways.

Putting the Morpheus headset on is a bit of a production at this point, but only a bit. The first step was lowering the top, cushioned headband portion over the top of my head and adjusting a crank on the back to tighten it around my forehead and the back of my cranium. I then had to lower the visor portion down in front of my eyes and adjust its distance by pushing a button on the base and sliding the display in and out. The 15 to 25 mm of "eye relief," as Sony describes it, actually provides a functionally large focusing range for a screen resting that close to your face. I ended up sliding the display as close to my face as possible, hovering the unit just barely above my nose, but users with glasses or trouble focusing will probably appreciate the ability to get a little more space.

Finally, the demo headphones were lowered over the outside of the unit. The Morpheus' top band actually got in the way of the ear cups forming a good seal around my ears, letting a good deal of sound from the outside world into my demo. The reps tried to point out the directionality of the sounds being pumped into my ears as I moved and turned, but I found it hard to discern any difference from plain old directionless stereo.

Getting the weight of the unit balanced just right took a little finagling, and getting everything set up is a more involved process than simply slapping the Rift and its elastic band over my face, ski-goggle style. Once everything is set, though, the payoff is a much more comfortable VR experience. Resting the weight of the unit on the top portion of the skull rather than right around the eyes is an inspired decision that makes it easier to forget you're wearing a headset at all (which is kind of the point, right?). The Morpheus headset seemed to be a little heavier than the latest Rift developer kit, but the way that weight is balanced and positioned made it seem much less obtrusive.

I'm the type of person who gets uncomfortable even wearing light sunglasses on my face, so having the display housing hover just in front of my face rather than pressed up against it with the tight seal of the Rift was a very welcome change. The only real downside to this difference is that the Morpheus unit doesn't form a perfect barrier that blocks out all external light; the thin, rubbery black extension left a slight gap that allowed me to see a sliver of the world out of the bottom, no matter how much I adjusted it. While it was nice to be able to see my surroundings a bit (to avoid bumping into things or people, for instance), it definitely distracted from the sense of "presence" that Sony says it's going for.

Performance

Kyle Orland

Don't expect any similar units with Microsoft or Nintendo logos on the sides anytime soon.

Kyle Orland

Don't expect any similar units with Microsoft or Nintendo logos on the sides anytime soon.

The glowing blue lights on the front corners really make this look like something out of the not-too-distant future.

A somewhat overhead view shows an elastic headband in addition to the cushioned white plastic portion, which cranks into place. Also, note the tracking lights on the back of the unit.

The converter box hooked up to the Morpheus takes in a good number of inputs from the PS4 (or perhaps a PC dev kit)...

... and converts them to a single wire that goes out to the headset.

Virtual reality is serious business.

The new Robocop's got nothing on me.

Hey, what's happening back there?

I got to try out two Morpheus tech demos at Sony's GDC booth. The first involved a lightly interactive deep-sea dive in a cage. This largely served as a fancy virtual aquarium, with schools of fish swimming right by my head and giving the head-tracking functionality a good workout. The demo offered a great sense of freedom in being able to walk around the small, caged environment, letting me turn around completely or even bend down while seeing my in-game avatar bend at the knees in the same way.

When I walked forward to the edge of the cage at one point and craned my neck over the lip to look down at a dropping oxygen tank, it was probably the most striking moment of virtual reality I've yet experienced. That is until the end of the demo, when a violent shark attack shook the cage around me, literally making me jump, The only thing that really took away from the feeling was the fact that the ground beneath me didn't shake in real life to match the floor of my VR cage. If an earthquake had hit San Francisco at that moment, I probably wouldn't have noticed.

The second demo was a medieval-themed target practice course that used two Move controllers to give me control of disembodied virtual hands. I first used these hands to grab and pummel a floating armored dummy to great effect. Then I grabbed a sword standing at my side and used it to chop off the dummy's limbs one by one. Finally, I was given a virtual crossbow to aim at some targets sitting a few apparent meters away.

When the Move tracking was working, it was pretty incredible to see what seemed like pretty close to true one-to-one correspondence between my real and virtual hands, with no real delay or misalignment. I did run into some significant tracking problems during my demo, though, seemingly when the camera lost track of the Move controllers as I reached too low or too far forward. When aiming the crossbow, I really wanted to try peering down the virtual sights to line up my shot, but the software seemed completely unwilling to comply, simply resetting the weapon's position to hover a few feet in front of me when I tried.

Despite the problems with Move tracking, though, I found the head tracking to be spot on throughout both demos. Morpheus never lost track of my place or perspective in the world, no matter how much I walked around, tilted my head, shook, or even jumped up and down. Sony engineer Dr. Richard Marks told me that the current headset has a 40 ms delay between movement and pixels on the display, which was reduced slightly at times with predictive movement modeling. Marks said he'd like to get it down to at most 20 ms, but even at this stage, things seemed plenty responsive to me, and I did not experience any feelings of nausea or displacement.

Despite the use of relatively slow LCD displays, the Morpheus didn't have any of the kinds of blurry, overly persistent images that plagued early Rift prototypes and developer kits. And while both the Rift and the Morpheus share the same 1080p resolution at this point, the image on Sony's unit felt the slightest bit sharper, with a less of a visible "screen door" pattern between the pixels (this last part could be my imagination, though).

The worst thing I can point to about Project Morpheus' design, really, is the single wire leading from a junction box to the headset, which I could feel bumping against me at points and threatening to get tangled as I moved about. Marks said the engineering team was investigating the potential for a completely wireless version in the future, but he didn't seem all that hopeful about achieving the required low latency without a direct connection.

All in all, I came away extremely impressed by my brief time with Project Morpheus. It's the first of a number of VR solutions I've tried that really feels like it's in the same class as the Oculus Rift, and it even feels superior in areas like comfort and full 360 degree tracking. We're looking forward to seeing more examples of how Sony and other developers plan to use this new headset after hundreds of developer kits start going out next month.

Promoted Comments

I hope these companies agree on a standard API/SDK eventually. I think that could be a big limitation going forward. Just think if you had to make sure your monitor was compatible with your latest game. At least a standard API/SDK would make the software side much easier for developers.

As much as I want VR tech to happen, the picture here summarizes everything that will hold it back from mainstream acceptance. Until this technology is as invisible as possible, it's going to face massive, massive problems as far as accessibility. Sure, I can see myself strapping into one. But I can't see other people in my life doing the same.

That's the magic point-- when it can be done in a way that makes the mainstream person go "yeah, I can get into that. Carrying around a clunker of a Windows tablet made some jobs easier, but it didn't make people go "yeah, I can see myself using that." The iPad, love or hate Apple, did.

For all the fears of privacy, the Kinect is still the device I think has the greatest chance of consumer adoption, largely because it sort of fades away after you set it up. As the tech miniaturizes, putting it in TVs, monitors and computers will help that.

A solution that requires holding two bright glowing balls while you're in a giant glowing headset just doesn't scream mainstream success to me.

Kyle Orland / Kyle is the Senior Gaming Editor at Ars Technica, specializing in video game hardware and software. He has journalism and computer science degrees from University of Maryland. He is based in Pittsburgh, PA.